Dual-core chip? Been there done that! The latest is Tukwila – a chip that has broken the two billion barrier. Released by Intel, this chip has managed to accommodate more than two billion transistors. Does this mean never-before-seen speed? Not quite because this chips operates at 2 GHz – a normal thing for many PC chips of today. Intel, in developing Tukwila, has also adhered to Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors that can be squeezed in a chip at a particular fixed cost doubles every two years. Intel had released the first processor to contain more than one billion transistors in 2006.
The speed at which this chip works is downright pathetic (considering the number of transistors) when compared to Intel’s “world’s fastest commercial chip” released last year, which had just 790 million transistors. It operated at an amazing 4.7 GHz.
The massive difference in speeds is explained by the fact that a massive number of transistors on Tukwila are just for storing data. This is but a reflection of the current trend in the computing industry wherein several companies are looking to sacrifice speed for a bit of extra performance in that the cache memory’s purpose is more or less served by the transistors on the chips itself.
Normal users need not worry; companies will continue catering to their demand as well. Tukwila, meanwhile, is aimed at high-end servers rather than PCs.
